Israel to investigate Pegasus spyware being used on its own citizens

JERUSALEM (NYTIMES) - The intensifying scrutiny of NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm, has largely come from overseas as evidence mounted that authoritarian governments had used NSO products to spy on political opponents.

On Monday (Feb 7), the controversy came home as the Israeli government said it would investigate reports that the Israeli police had illegally used spyware against its citizens without a court order, including a key state witness in the corruption trial of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who succeeded Mr Netanyahu in June, said the deputy attorney general was "looking quickly" into the claims, while Public Security Minister Omer Barlev, who oversees the police, said he would open an official inquiry.

The efforts constitute the Israeli government's most public expression of concern about NSO - once promoted by Israeli officials as a centrepiece of the Israeli tech industry - since the firm began attracting global scrutiny in 2016.

The allegations caused a brief delay in Mr Netanyahu's trial, after judges postponed hearings Monday to allow prosecutors time to address the claims, amid calls by Mr Netanyahu's allies for the trial to be scrapped entirely.

The moves reflected rising concerns within Israel about the use of spyware made by NSO and other companies, which had been spared significant domestic scrutiny because it was not widely seen as a threat to Israeli citizens.

But on Monday, NSO's flagship spyware product, Pegasus, was being portrayed in Israel in much the same way it has been by critics abroad, as a threat to democracy.

Mr Bennett said that "the reports about Pegasus, if they are true, are very serious".

Spyware products such as Pegasus, he added, "are important tools in the fight against terrorism and severe crime, but they were not intended to be used in phishing campaigns targeting the Israeli public or officials - which is why we need to understand exactly what happened".

Created to help governments track criminal and terrorist activity, Pegasus allows its users to monitor every aspect of a target's phone - including their calls, messages, photos and video.

In Israel it cannot legally be used against Israeli citizens without a judicial warrant.

Ms Ayelet Shaked, one of several Cabinet ministers to speak about the furor, described the allegations as "an earthquake".

"I am shocked," she added. "I cannot believe this is my country."

The reactions followed a steady drip of recent allegations, principally from Calcalist, a business news daily, which claimed that the Israeli police had used Pegasus to extract information and data from the phones of Israeli activists, local politicians, businessmen, civil servants, and both critics and associates of Mr Netanyahu's.

The reported targets included Mr Netanyahu's younger son, Avner.

The police were accused of either bypassing judicial oversight altogether, or of deploying spyware from NSO and other companies in a manner that exceeded the parameters set by judges.

The New York Times has not confirmed the new allegations.

In announcing the inquiry, Mr Barlev said that any "wrongdoings, if there have been any," occurred under previous governments.

Previous police commissioner Roni Alsheich has declined requests for comment since the allegations surfaced.

The Israeli police said in a statement that they were "cooperating fully" with the investigation.

For years, NSO, under licences from the Israeli Defense Ministry, has sold Pegasus to authoritarian governments who used it to hack the phones of activists, lawyers and politicians.

Palestinian officials have also accused the Israeli government of using the spyware against Palestinian diplomats.

In November, the Biden administration blacklisted NSO, saying it knowingly supplied spyware that has been used by foreign governments to "maliciously target" the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and others.

The Times recently reported that Mr Netanyahu's government used the sale of the spyware to extract political favours from foreign countries, a claim Mr Netanyahu denied.

The Times also found that the US government bought NSO spyware, before outlawing the company last year.

The Israeli police have used a version of Pegasus domestically since 2015 and in the past two years have hacked the phones of more than 100 targets a year, according to a former official and a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But NSO and its products have attracted little attention within Israel, and the question of their domestic misuse by the Israeli authorities had never been formally investigated until this year.

Previously, many Israelis saw NSO as a peripheral story about "an international Israeli company that got mixed up in a cyberweapon scandal", said Mr Nadav Eyal, a prominent Israeli commentator.

"Now it has become something that Israelis are seeing has been used against them."

The accusations were seized on by Mr Netanyahu's supporters and critics alike.

To his backers, the claims were an opportunity to undermine the legitimacy of his corruption trial, which helped prompt his loss of power last summer.

Prosecutors accuse Mr Netanyahu of giving business people political favours in exchange for gifts and positive news coverage - charges he has denied and portrayed as politically motivated.

Israel Katz, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, described the alleged hacking of the phone of a trial witness as "a blatant attempt to overthrow an incumbent prime minister by illegal means" and "a serious threat to democracy in the state of Israel."

But Netanyahu's opponents, including ministers in the current government, noted that the alleged abuses were said to have occurred during his tenure as prime minister, and under Mr Alsheich, the commissioner, whom he had appointed.